usalights.com - The Lighthouses Of Alaska

Alaska Lighthouse
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Alaska, the Great Land, has 33,000 miles of coastline, three million lakes larger than 20 acres and ten of it's rivers are longer than 300 miles. The Yukon River wanders 1,979 miles from Canada to the Bering Sea.
Many Alaskans rely upon the sea for their livelihood, the fishing industry alone, employing multi-thousands annually. Despite increased safety precautious approximately 1,300 lives are lost each year in the state of Alaska, many due to maritime related accidents. Is it any wonder that aids to navigation in Alaskan waters are important? Mile for mile, Alaska probably has fewer navigation aids than any place in the world, due mostly to its sparce population and seemingly endless expanse.
To thwart the rash of marine disasters, the government attempted to establish navigation aids at the most perilous points, but the effort in many cases was too little and too late, Alaska is wrapped in maritime history, and it is the Russians who get the kudos for establishing the first official lighthouse north of Mexico. Though the Spaniards made some feeble attempts at guarding their "New Spain" waterways, it was the Russians in 1837, that first employed a light enclosed in a lantern, atop the old administration building, frequently referred to as "Baranof's Castle," at the port of New Archangel, (Sitka). That was 30 years before Uncle Sam purchased the territory for $7.2 million. The toll of lost ships and men on the northerly route from Siberia was costly, the Aleutian chain claiming many Czarist vessels, mostly of the Russian American Company. There was little succor for the unfortunate castaways. The Russians based most of their activity at Sitka and at Kodiak and saw no feasibility for placing lighthouses at intervals along the onerous sea route.
On March 30, 1867, William H. Seward, as secretary of state under President Andrew Johnson, purchased Alaska, a transaction labled as "Seward's Folly." The official turnover took place on October 18, at which time Alaska became a district of the United States until 1912, a territory until 1959 and finally the 49th state. With the annexation of Alaska, the government was extremely slow in reacting to the desperate need for navigation aids, perhaps due to the apathy of many solons who considered Alaska a royal white elephant.

The two greatest incentives for spurring trade and commerce in Alaska have come three-quarters of a century apart. In 1897 it was the discovery of gold, and in the 1970's it was black gold (oil) that brought great wealth to the state. During the gold rush, following the arrival of the steamer Portland at Seattle with the famous "ton of gold" from the Alaskan diggings, a huge armada of ships moved northward packed to the gunwales with gold-thirsty persons. Steamship inspection laws were lax and frequently inexperienced navigators commanded unseaworthy wooden and steel floating coffins. During those years and in the decade to follow the complex and difficult Alaska waterways were to claim scores of ships and men. Dots on the charts denoting shipwrecks were numerous, names like the passenger liners Princess Sophia, Islander; Mexico, Corona, Lauroda, Ohio, Valdez Stare of California and on and on, vessels whose final ports were the reefs and rocks of both the Inside and Outside passages. The most tragic was the loss of the 55 Princess Sophia that foundered with her entire complement of 343 persons after slipping off Vanderbilt Reef in a 1918 blizzard.